


Enigmas

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [129]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avenger Loki (Marvel), Avenger Reader (Marvel), Avengers Tower, Backstory, Dark Past, Friendship, Gen, POV Loki (Marvel), Reader-Insert, Stark Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25660852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: When you come from nowhere and join the team, you begin to take up more of Loki’s mental space than he ever could have expected.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [129]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 10
Kudos: 161





	Enigmas

**Author's Note:**

> This isn’t the usual fluffy kind of fic but I’ve been using alternative methods of inspiration (mainly a giant list of prompts that are only a few words long and a random number generator) and this is what I came up with for “silence”. Loki is utterly fascinated by the reader and I don’t know about the rest of you but sometimes just reading something like that is enough to make me feel good. If you need something fluffier and more tactile, I might recommend [Soft Things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24208159)?

There were not many mortals, Loki had discovered, who were entirely comfortable sitting in silence. When he counted mortals were were entirely comfortable sitting in silence _with him_ , the number dropped to zero. Midgardians were too busy inside, too full of their own brand of swirling chaos even for his taste. It was grating, being in the same room as too many of them, where he inevitably had to listen to someone jaw on about practically nothing until someone else interrupted them only to carry on doing the same thing. A quiet voice in the back of his mind—Thor, maybe, or, more likely, his mother—told him to keep his patience. Mortals did not have the same amount of time as he did. They had to cram their entire lives into eighty or ninety years, if they were lucky, and the idea of living past a century was unthinkable for most of them. So maybe, on very good days, he could understand why they were constantly talking, constantly filling the lovely silence with wordswordswords, but he didn’t have to _like_ it.

Things changed when you began joining him in the common spaces. He tried to come out only at night, only when all the others were likely to be asleep, or at least hidden safely away in their own rooms. He didn’t necessarily want to have to listen to them talk at him, but also he didn’t want to see the way they looked at him. Once again, that maddening voice in the back of his mind reminded him that they only truly knew him as a monster, a deranged would-be tyrant hell-bent on possessing their world. They didn’t know why he’d come here. They didn’t know who he’d been Before. So most of them watched him warily, or with a calculating gleam in their eyes that made him uncomfortably aware of the fact that they were planning out how they’d try to kill him if he lost himself again.

And then you’d shown up. No one knew much about you. It was clear enough that you and Barnes knew each other, judging by the frightened, woeful looks you gave each other, but neither of you volunteered any information. The team had been in upheaval when you first arrived, scrambling to make sense of your background and your loyalties. Natasha was still wary of you, and Barnes was just weird around you, but the others seemed to have relaxed into accepting your presence at least, even if they didn’t seem to _like_ it.

Maybe he allowed himself to relate to you more than he should have. It was almost nice, seeing someone _else_ get the suspicious looks. You noticed them, of course. It was impossible to miss the uneasy way you moved through the Tower, the way you hesitated before entering a room with anyone in it. He’d never allowed himself to look like that, as far as he knew, but he recognized the feeling.

The first night that you appeared in the doorway to the sitting room, he’d been impressed by your stealth. He hadn’t heard you coming, and the only thing that drew his attention to your presence at all was some subtle shift in the air. He just barely kept himself from jumping when he saw you. You didn’t have the same hulking, threatening presence that Barnes had, but there was something in your eyes that felt similar. You always gave Loki the feeling that you were scanning a room for danger—and not merely because the room happened to contain Loki of Asgard. He got the sense that you thoroughly examined any room you were about to walk into, and checked for at least a handful of emergency exits in case something happened. He remembered that hypervigilance. It hadn’t done him much good Before, but it’d been hard to shake once he got here.

Tonight, he nodded at you in greeting, and was surprised when you nodded back at him. He made a show of returning his attention to the book in his lap, though he did remain more focused on your movement than on the words. You hovered for another few moments, deathly still in the doorway, but then finally stepped through. He heard the way you hesitated a little longer before sitting awkwardly on one of the sofas behind him. He heard a familiar ruffling of pages. Strange. He hadn’t noticed the book you held; he’d been too focused on your face.

He should have been able to go back to reading. Books were one of his only escapes from this Tower, after all, and even though Midgardian writers couldn’t compare to the masters he’d read back home, it was easy enough for him to slip into the stories they told. Perhaps these stories were even helping him figure out how to empathize with Midgardians—he certainly came to feel for the people and characters on the pages. Stark filled this place with countless bookshelves heavily-laden with texts, and somehow, a large portion of them were actually interesting to him.

But now he couldn’t make himself focus. You were practically silent where you sat, only giving yourself away when you turned a page. His mind raced with questions for you. About you. It felt completely alien to him, being so curious about a Midgardian, but everything about you was different. He held his tongue, though. This felt fragile, like speaking too soon could shatter it and send you away again.

It turned into a routine. When darkness fell in around the Tower and the others went to sleep, Loki made sure to plant himself in that chair and wait for you to join him. You did, often. For a long time, he sat in that very same chair and stared at the very same pages and did his best _not_ to blurt out all the questions that ran through his mind. There was a small window of opportunity each night: between the time you appeared in the doorway and the time you sat on the sofa, he allowed himself to speak to you. 

He started out with just your name, murmured as simply as one might murmur a greeting. The first time he spoke to you, it made you freeze for a moment and study him suspiciously. You must have seen something in his face or in his body that made you relax, though, because he heard you let out a breath before you responded with his name. After a while, he moved on to observations about the weather, or about past missions, or about how he’d been waiting for you to show up. You mostly responded with silence, though you did speak up from time to time. Loki learned to push his curiosity aside, learned to practice _patience_ with you so that he wouldn’t run the risk of scaring you off. It was hard to say why he was so interested. Mostly he told himself that you were an interesting project, something to distract himself from the mind-numbing simplicity of everyone else in the Tower.

One night, things changed. He could see your exhaustion in the way that you stalked towards the sofa, but he didn’t mention it. You were the first to speak to him, in fact: some quiet observation about how it never got dark enough around here to see the stars. He’d never thought of you as the sentimental, star-gazing type, and said as much even as he raised his eyes to look out the window. You mumbled something about a childhood in some faraway place where the stars always felt so much closer and sank down onto the sofa.

He listened to you fall asleep. You put forth a good effort when it came to reading: you opened your book and even turned a few pages, but he could not miss the way your breaths grew deeper, longer. He craned his neck to look at you, and something squeezed in his chest. You were tucked into the corner, your head resting in your hand supported by your elbow on the arm of the sofa. Your legs were folded beneath you. For the first time maybe _ever_ , you looked halfway peaceful. Barnes didn’t allow himself to fall asleep in common spaces like this. Had you fallen asleep because of Loki’s presence, or despite it?

He sat there for a long time. It should have been easier to focus on his book now that he was more or less alone again, but he couldn’t help but feel a little forlorn that he would not be able to say anything else to you. His impatience flared. He would have liked to have sat there a little longer, like he could watch over you as you slept, but an antsy feeling in his legs made him rise too quickly. He crept over to you and reached out to take your book from your lap so he could place it on the coffee table. The instant he closed his fingers around it and gave the slightest little tug, though, your arm shot out. You gripped his throat. You were stronger than any other mortal he’d ever sparred with, and your fingers felt like they sought to crush his windpipe, but it was easy enough for him to grab your wrist and say your name.

When you opened your eyes, it didn’t take long before they filled with horror. You tried to jerk your hand away, but he held fast to your wrist, and his strength outmatched yours. 

“I’m sorry.” Your voice was barely audible, but somehow he still caught the faintest traces of an accent coloring your words. When you were awake, you spoke perfect English, at least to his ears. This was the first hint that you knew any other language. Interesting. He felt his lips curl into a grin, and you tried once again to pull your hand back. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m hard to kill, darling. But if I say yes, will you answer a few of my questions to try and repay me?” It was hard to say exactly where the idea had come from, but he watched your face as you parsed his words. You ventured a single glance up at his face, and he caught the guilt in your eyes, and perhaps a little fear?

He watched you breathe in several times, like you were trying to get your racing heart under control. He thought about letting go of you, but that seemed like a gamble. He did slightly loosen his grip, though, and brushed his thumb along the warm underside of your wrist. Maybe that worked. “I’ll try. There’s...a lot that I don’t know.”

Still without letting go of you, Loki moved to sit next to you on the cushion. At this point, if you tried again to pull your hand away, he knew he’d have to let you go. But you didn’t. He took a few moments to tamp down his giddy excitement in favor of running through his mental catalog of questions. As he did, he noticed the way he continued to caress your skin. Somehow, that became more interesting to him. He fixed his eyes on his lap, where your conjoined hands rested. Whoever you were, whatever your story, the feeling of you was enough to make his mind go still. And he...well, he didn’t _hate_ it.

Movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he looked over at you. You looked over at him again, without warning or preparation this time, and maybe it was just his imagination, but Loki could have sworn that he saw something new in your eyes. Something like curiosity. Something like interest.


End file.
